Welcome to GodBricks

Hey all,

Welcome to my blog, GodBricks - blogging at the intersection between LEGO and religion. I'm a LEGO hobbyist (known in the hobbyist community as an AFOL - Adult Fan of LEGO) and also a religious person. I feel that our most deeply held views impact all of our lives, including our hobbies. This blog explores that connection. A quick FAQ:

Why start this blog? Religious themes have been at the heart of much of the great art and architecture over the history of mankind. Since I believe that LEGO is (or at least can be, though that is another debate) both art and architecture, it is no surprise that there are many religiously themed LEGO creations out there, from LEGO illustrated Bible stories, to recreations of great cathedrals, etc. This blog was inspired by a group on another site that was supposed to be about LEGO and Christianity. I joined, thinking it might be interesting, but it turned out to just be a forum to argue about different aspects of religion/atheism etc. Frustrated, I decided to start something more along the lines that I had hoped to find there.

What topics will be covered? Really any LEGO topic that touches on religion. I'll treat that fairly broadly. For instance, I could see an installment of the Brick Testament, a sculpture of a Buddha, something based on religiously themed literature (e.g. Narnia), or even something about Darwin (since evolution/creation is a debate that touches on religious themes). Full disclosure here - I am a Christian of a Protestant stripe, so I may tend to notice things related more to my own religious tradition, plus much of the LEGO community is based in the US/Europe where Christianity is the dominant tradition, so there may be a bias towards LEGO creations that touch on this, but I'll be open to blogging any LEGO mosque or whatever from a different faith system.

Why another blog? Yes, I already have three other LEGO blogs devoted to vignettes microscale and miniland. Some might question why not just have one big "all things LEGO" blog rather than split my attention multiple ways. The simple truth is that I really like blogs with themes rather than just anything cool, plus the Brothers-Brick and Klocki have, IMO, pretty much covered the ground on general LEGO blogs. If I did decide to go "all things LEGO", rather than expanding one of my own blogs, I'd ask Andrew if I could join his team at the BB. I like there to be one place to go to find all you want to about a given topic. Say, for instance, you're into LEGO train building. If there were a hypothetical TrainBricks blog, you could keep up on all the news in that area. Plus, if there were a non-LEGO fan out there who was into model railroading, they could run across this TrainBricks blog and find it very interesting, and maybe become interested in LEGO as a result. If their thing was trains, though, they'd be much less likely to stick around at, say, Brothers-Brick, where train creations are mixed in with castle, space, mecha, sculpture, general LEGO news, etc. I'm hoping that this blog could become interesting to people that are interested in religious topics, regardless of any prior interest in LEGO.

What about debates? I'm entering into this venture with fear and trembling, because I well know that this topic could spin off into debates about religion/atheism/creationism/stem-cells/transubstantiation/terrorism/etc. I'm going to ask people to stick to the brick in their comments. Yes, sometimes a LEGO creation has a message, and it's reasonable to discuss the message and how it is conveyed by the model. However, I'm going to try to stop any debates that spin too far away from the original topic, which starts with the LEGO.